FUBAR Disaster update

As promised, I went up to the general area of the crane collapse. I knew it would be blocked off well away from the actual site, and of course it was.

The crane collapsed between 1st Avenue and 2nd Avenue on 51st Street. Here’s a scene from 48th St and Second Avenue.

I could get as high as 49th Street before they shut down the street to traffic (including pedestrians).

At 49th Street, there were a number of newscrews doing interviews.

I don’t know the station or anything. I did see a truck from Macromedia doing some satellite sort of broadcasting, but no one was around the truck.

The only good news from this is that the death toll hasn’t seemed to grow from the initial four, although there are another four in critical condition.

The sobering picture of the moment (St. Patrick’s is tomorrow and we need some of that, I’d guess).

If you can’t read it, that the Mobile Command Center of the Medical Examiner. And there’s an empty gurney outside of it.

Another sobering sight was a truck from the Salvation Army. They had set up facilities to get residents places to stay. I don’t know if they allow anyone in neighboring buildings to stay in, but the idea of having 2 blocks evacuated in every direction is horrible. There are a lot of people living there. Many thousands, I’d suspect. Hotel rooms…$300 to $500 a night for a decent place.

Oh, I do need to mention this. In my previous post, I said I hadn’t heard more sirens and helicopters than usual. Well, last night the helicopters never seemed to go away. I kept changing the local channels and seeing live broadcasts from them, too. It’s still a little weird for me to hear sounds outside the window while watching broadcasts of the events on TV.